DEC  13  1899 


m'x^"^' 


-^>^icalS^ 


BL  795  .15  W5  1899a 
Wheeler,  Benjamin  Ide,  1854 

1927. 
Dionysos  and  immortality 


STnfferfioU  IcctttreBi  on  ^mmoxtaiitjp. 


IMMORTALITY   AND   THE    NEW   THEODICY.     By 

George  A.  Gordon,  D.  D.     i6mo,  ^i.oo.     1897. 
HUMAN    IMMORTALITY:    Two  supposed  Objections 

to  the  Doctrine.      By   Professor  William  James. 

i6mo,  $1.00.     1898. 
DIONYSOS   AND    IMMORTALITY:   The  Greek  Faith 

in  Immortality  as  affected  by  the  rise  of  Individualism. 

By  President  Benjamin  Ide  Wheeler.  i6mo,  ^i.oo. 


HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

Boston  and  New  York. 


DIONYSOS 
AND  IMMORTALITY 

THE  GREEK  FAITH  IN 

IMMORTALITY   AS   AFFECTED   BY   THE 

RISE  OF  INDIVIDUALISM 

BY 

BENJAMIN   IDE   WHEELER 

PRESIDENT  OF  THE   UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AND  INGERSOLL   LECTURER   FOR   1898-99 


^^^^^m. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

1899 


COPYRIGHT,  1899,  BY  BENJAMIN  IDE  WHEELER 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 


THE   INGERSOLL  LECTURESHIP 


Extract  from  the  will  of  Miss  Caroline  Haskell  Ingersoll^ 

■who  died  in  Keene,  County  of  Cheshire,  New 

Hampshire,  Jan.  sb,  i8gj. 

First.  In  carrying  out  the  wishes  of  my  late 
beloved  father,  George  Goldthwait  Ingersoll,  as 
declared  by  him  in  his  last  will  and  testament,  I 
give  and  bequeath  to  Harvard  University  in  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.,  where  my  late  father  was  graduated, 
and  which  he  always  held  in  love  and  honor,  the 
sum  of  Five  thousand  dollars  ($5,000)  as  a  fund  for 
the  establishment  of  a  Lectureship  on  a  plan  some- 
what similar  to  that  of  the  Dudleian  lecture,  that  is 
—  one  lecture  to  be  delivered  each  year,  on  any  con- 
venient day  between  the  last  day  of  May  and  the 
first  day  of  December,  on  this  subject,  "the  Im- 
mortality of  Man,"  said  lecture  not  to  form  a  part 
of  the  usual  college  course,  nor  to  be  delivered  by 
any  Professor  or  Tutor  as  part  of  his  usual  routine 
of  instruction,  though  any  such  Professor  or  Tutor 
may  be  appointed  to  such  service.  The  choice  of 
said  lecturer  is  not  to  be  limited  to  any  one  religious 
denomination,  nor  to  any  one  profession,  but  may 
be  that  of  either  clergyman  or  layman,  the  appoint- 
ment to  take  place  at  least  six  months  before  the 
delivery  of  said  lecture.  The  above  sum  to  be 
safely  invested  and  three  fourths  of  the  annual  in- 
terest thereof  to  be  paid  to  the  lecturer  for  his 
services  and  the  remaining  fourth  to  be  expended 
in  the  pubhshment  and  gratuitous  distribution  of 
the  lecture,  a  copy  of  which  is  always  to  be  fur- 
nished by  the  lecturer  for  such  purpose.  The  same 
lecture  to  be  named  and  known  as  "  the  Ingersoll 
lecture  on  the  Immortality  of  Man." 


DIONYSOS  AND  IMMORTALITY 


^O  people  has  ever  possessed  a  reli- 
gion more  delicately  responsive  to 
its  moods  than  the  people  of  ancient 
Greece.  This  they  owed  in  large  measure 
to  the  absence  of  an  ecclesiastical  organiza- 
tion. The  Greek  instinctively  abhorred  all 
mechanism,  for  mechanism,  as  guaranteeing 
like  and  constant  output  to  like  time  and 
like  material,  ignored  free  personality, — 
and  this  free  personality  was  to  the  Greek 
the  one  recognized  source  of  all  creative 
movement.  Least  of  all  did  he  need  the 
ecclesiastical  machine.  There  was  no 
priestly  hierarchy  either  for  Greece  as  a 
whole  or  for  single  cantons ;  not  even 
among  priests  of  the  same  cult  in  different 
cantons  was  there  organized  cooperation. 
Some  popular  shrine  or  oracle  might  win 
more  than  local  prestige  and  secure  the 


4  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

protection  and  support  of  various  neighbor- 
ing states,  but  there  the  drift  toward  central- 
ization and  organization  found  its  limit. 

At  no  time  did  there  exist  an  organized 
authority  which  could  formulate  standards 
of  faith  or  dictate  the  usages  of  religious 
etiquette.  Ritual,  seeking  that  which  in 
matter  and  manner  was  believed  to  be  well 
pleasing  to  the  gods,  followed  the  traditions 
of  the  individual  shrines,  and  there  were  no 
better  theologians  than  the  poets.  Dogmas 
there  were  none.  In  contrast  with  the 
religious  experience  of  a  land  like  India, 
Greece  stands  at  the  extreme.  There  re- 
ligion was  imposed  as  a  system  from  with- 
out, here  it  sprang  as  a  social  and  civic 
impulse  from  within. 

This  fundamental  characteristic  endows 
the  study  of  Greek  religious  thought  at 
once  with  singular  charm  and  with  singular 
difficulty.  We  know  on  the  one  hand  that 
if  we  can  penetrate  through  the  thick-tangled 
meshes  of  mythology  and  ritual  to  the  un- 
spoken faiths  lying  behind,  we  shall  find 


The  Greek  Religion  5 

them  hard  by  the  life  conditions  and  the 
views  of  life  which  were  their  source.  On 
the  other  hand,  as  no  authority  essayed 
to  formulate  what  Greeks  should  believe,  so 
no  contemporary  was  moved  to  state  in  con- 
nected form,  nor  presumably  even  to  think, 
what  they  did  believe. 

Research  has  spent  itself  in  following  the 
shifting  forms  of  the  mythology  through 
glade,  and  fen,  and  grotto,  until  they  prove 
themselves  most  mere  will-o'-the-wisps, — 
light-winged  fancies,  whether  of  poets  who 
write,  or  of  poets  who  dream  and  write  not. 
Sometimes  they  are  mirror  flashes  from  the 
ritual  thrown  upon  the  valley  mist,  some- 
times they  are  dim  ghosts  of  a  storied  past, 
sometimes  they  are  shadowy  images  of  na- 
ture and  her  signs,  but  seldom  are  they 
trusty  guides  into  the  land  of  reality.  Other 
guides  we  must  follow  if  we  would  come  to 
a  knowledge  of  the  plain  faith  by  which  men 
stayed  their  lives,  measured  their  duty,  esti- 
mated the  meaning  of  life's  beginning  and 
life's  end. 


6  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

I  propose  in  what  follows  to  speak  of  one 
phase  of  this  plain,  inner  faith  among  the 
Greeks,  the  belief  in  the  life  after  death, 
and,  lest  I  wander  too  far  afield,  to  speak 
in  particular  of  the  marvelous  quickening 
and  development  which  that  belief  under- 
went during  one  most  significant  epoch  in 
the  national  life.  It  is  in  its  readjustment 
to  changed  conditions  of  life  and  new  views 
of  the  world  that  a  people's  faith  best  be- 
trays whither  its  face  is  really  set.  That 
which  conditions  it  then  becomes  the  back- 
ground against  which  we  measure  it. 

In  undertaking  this  task  we  do  not  shut 
our  eyes  to  the  fact  that  in  Old  Greece 
there  were,  as  now,  many  men  and  many 
minds,  —  that  there  was  diversity  in  the 
beliefs  of  different  tribes  and  districts,  that 
there  were  strongly  marked  strata  of  intelli- 
gence or  culture,  that  survivals  from  earlier 
horizons  of  belief,  be  it  through  the  forms 
of  ritual  or  through  the  revered  texts  of  the 
national  epic,  continually  intruded  them- 
selves to  confuse  the  bearings  in  the  new, 


Primitive  Dualism  7 

but  still  there  is  a  law  in  things  human  that 
that  which  holds  itself  below  the  attacks  of 
systematic  reason  tends  toward  homogeneity 
and  unity,  —  and  Greece  in  the  period  with 
which  we  deal  had  not  yet  fallen  ill  of  phi- 
losophy. 

As  part  of  the  common  stock  of  primitive 
human  thought  the  Greek  inherited  the  nat- 
ural consciousness  for  being  as  absolute,  as 
unbounded  by  non-being.  To  forget  is  the 
one  gate  of  annulment.  The  common  hu- 
man belief  in  the  shadowy  second-self,  re- 
vealed, it  may  well  be,  in  the  experiences 
of  sleep  and  dreams,  swoons  and  ecstasies, 
was  also  his  belief,  and  to  him  man  was  body 
and  soul. 

When  a  man  dies,  the  soul  issues  forth 
from  the  body  to  seek  other  residence.  And 
not  man's  life  alone  is  thus  dual ;  all  life,  of 
beast,  of  tree,  of  the  river  current,  of  the 
fountain,  of  the  wind  and  the  storm-cloud,  is 
made  up  of  body  and  soul.  For  the  primitive 
Greek  as  for  the  primitive  man,  there  was 
no  other  way  in  which  to  think  of  life. 


8  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

Even  philosophy  when  it  made  its  first  at- 
tempts began  in  terms  of  this  same  simple 
dualism  which  dominated  all  thought,  and 
the  apxTj,  water,  air,  or  fire,  which  Thales, 
Anaximenes,  and  Herakleitos  inquired  after, 
was  conceived  in  the  analogy  of  the  \l/vxQ ; 
it  was  the  world-soul. 

If  we  are  to  believe,  as  it  seems  likely  we 
must,  that  the  religion  of  primitive  man^ 
received  its  character  in  the  struggle  to 
conciliate  and  be  at  peace  with  soul-life 
dwelling  and  wandering  in  his  environment, 
then  we  can  say  that  the  primitive  Greek 
religion,  or,  if  we  dare  use  the  term,  the 
Indo-European  religion,^  had  made  so  much 
advance  upon  this,  that  it  had  introduced 
certain  classifications,  a  certain  system  and 
order,  certain  limitations  into  the  chaos  of 
soul-dreads  and  soul-worships.  It  had  de- 
veloped the  family,  the  greater  family  or 
clan,  and  the  tribe  as  definite  organizations 
existing  for  the  purpose,  or  held  together  by 
the  usage,  of  caring  for  the  souls  of  an- 
cestors, the  family  the  nearer,  the  tribe  the 


Soul-Worship  and  Nature-Worship      g 

remoter.  It  had  restricted  the  care  for 
spirits  resident  in  natural  (Ejects  mostly  to 
specific  cults  and  shrines,  and  through  gen- 
eralization upon  natural  objects  and  pheno- 
mena had  obtained  certain  types  of  the  so- 
called,  "  nature-gods."  Nature-gods  as  such, 
however,  there  were  none. 

Between  soul-worship  and  nature-worship, 
at  least  from  the  point  of  view  of  Greek  re- 
ligion, no  sharp  line  of  demarcation  is  to  be 
drawn.  The  primitive  belief  in  the  residence 
of  souls  in  natural  objects  colored  all  the 
later  developments  of  the  theogony,  and 
the  great  gods,  the  **  nature-gods,"  carried 
up  with  them  from  their  origin  the  sem- 
blances of  ancestor-gods,  and  as  such  always 
had  the  character  of  persons,  members  of 
the  community,  first  citizens  of  tribe  or 
state. 

Thus  Hermes,  who  always  bears  in  his 
character  suggestions  of  the  phenomena  of 
the  wind,  and  develops  attributes  determined 
by  the  impression  which  these  phenomena 
make  upon  the  minds  of  men,  is  a  fellow- 


10  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

citizen,  an  honorary  member  of  the  state- 
guild,  an  embodiment  of  the  purpose  and 
meaning  of  society  and  the  state.  Respect 
for  him  is  a  constituent  part  of  loyalty ;  im- 
piety toward  him  and  his  kind  is  treason, 
and  treason  has  no  other  definition  than 
impiety. 

After  the  analogies  of  ancestor-worship 
kings  traced  their  descent  back  to  these 
gods,  who  were  thus  joined  by  the  geneal- 
ogies to  the  fate  and  fabric  of  the  state. 
The  gods,  too,  were  related  among  them- 
selves, and  their  organization  into  a  bond 
of  relationship  gave  color  to  the  instinct  of 
unity  among  the  diverse  tribes  who  owned 
them  as  kin.  One  of  them  bore,  indeed, 
from  Indo-European  times,  the  title  of 
''father"  (Zev  Trarep,  Jupitcr),  and  he  re- 
mained in  his  character  as  father  the  per- 
sonal sponsor  for  Hellenic  unity. 

All  the  observances  of  the  ritual  took 
their  form  from  the  primitive  usages  of 
feeding  and  entertaining  souls.  The  feast 
for  the  dead,  at  which  in  the  inner  circle  of 


Festival  and  Sacrifice  1 1 

the  family  the  soul  of  the  departed  was  es- 
teemed the  guest  of  honor,  differed  in  sub- 
stance no  whit  from  the  great  sacrifices 
which  the  state  offered  its  great  gods.  The 
funeral  games  for  Patroklos  were  of  the 
same  significance  as  those  offered  for  en- 
tertainment of  Zeus  in  the  plain  of  Olympia. 
Throughout  the  whole  life  and  practice 
of  Greek  religion  the  festivals  retained  the 
scantly  disguised  form  of  entertainments  in 
honor  of  the  gods  as  "first  citizens"  of 
the  state,  the  tribe,  or  the  association.  The 
sacrifices  were  feasts  at  which  the  god  and 
his  entertainers  dined  together  and  partook 
of  the  same  food,  if  not  of  the  same  life. 
The  priests  were  the  specialists  in  divine 
etiquette  who  knew  what  portions  and  what 
manners  were  pleasing  to  the  personages 
who  were  the  guests  of  honor.  The  games 
were  an  entertainment  offered  to  the  guests 
which  were  as  certainly  believed  to  be  grati- 
fying to  their  sight  as  a  review  of  troops 
or  a  deer-hunt  to  a  modern  European 
sovereign. 


12  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

To  return  now  to  our  characterization  of 
primitive,  i.  e.,  prae-Homeric  Greek  religion,^ 
we  know  that  it  maintained  a  system  of 
offerings  to  the  souls  of  the  departed,  and 
that  these  offerings  were  made  at  the  graves 
where  the  souls  were  believed  to  linger,  or 
to  which  on  occasions  they  were  wont  to 
return.  They  were  offerings  of  food,  in 
which  the  offering  of  blood  played  a  promi- 
nent part,  and  were  intended  to  appease 
and  conciliate  the  souls  *  and  prevent  the 
baneful  intrusion  of  their  wrath  into  the 
life  of  living  men. 

A  belief  in  a  place  beneath  the  earth,  a 
deep  cavernous  abode  where  all  the  souls 
were  assembled,  not  for  punishment  or 
blessing,  but  simply  for  residence,  was  a 
part  of  the  earliest  faith,  apparently  derived 
from  prae-Greek,  probably  Indo-European 
faith.  The  Vedic  idea  of  a  residence  for 
the  fathers  in  the  heaven  above  the  earth 
is,  as  Oldenberg^  has  made  almost  cer- 
tain, a  substitute  for  an  earlier  belief  in  an 
abode    beneath    the  earth.     In  the   Indo- 


Cultus  of  the  Dead  i^ 

Iranian  beliefs  which  lie  behind  the  sepa- 
rate Indian  and  Iranian  religions  the  dead 
were,  as  he  seems  to  have  demonstrated, 
conceived  of  as  residing  in  the  earth,  and 
in  conformity  to  this  view  the  cult  of  the 
dead  was  originally  celebrated.  To  induce 
the  soul  to  retire  into  this  common  abode 
of  the  dead  and  there  find  contented  rest 
is  apparently  the  supreme  aim  and  purpose 
of  the  rites  of  the  grave  among  the  early 
Hindoos  as  among  the  early  Greeks. 

In  marked  contrast  now  with  this  early 
faith  and  practice,  which  we  have  thus  far 
been  considering,  the  religion  represented 
in  the  Homeric  poems  discovers  an  almost 
complete  atrophy  of  the  cultus  of  the  dead. 
Once  *'the  life-energy  had  left  the  white 
bones "  ^  and  the  funeral  pyre  with  its 
"stout  force  of  gleaming  fire  o'ermas- 
tered  "  flesh  and  bones,  then  the  psyche 
"  flitting  off  like  a  dream  is  flown  "  to  the 
"  asphodel  moors  "  beyond  the  river. 

There  it  tarries  in  a  shadowy  existence 
without  memory  or  will,   and  without  in- 


14  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

terest  in  the  affairs  of  men,  or  power  to 
intrude  itself  into  them.  The  recurring 
observances  at  the  tomb  had  ceased.  The 
feeding  of  souls  and  all  the  rites  of  soul- 
worship  had  been  discontinued,  for,  after 
the  soul  had  once  been  led  by  Hermes  the 
guide  down  "  the  dank  ways  "  and  under 
**the  misty  gloom,"  it  never  retraced  the 
path  nor  crossed  the  river  again.  Some 
strange  wind  of  skepticism,  some  cold,  clear 
tramontana  of  spiritual  agnosticism,  whose 
source  and  meaning  we  may  never  know, 
had  purged  of  ghosts  the  air  of  Homer's 
worldJ  Proper  burial  was  the  one  condi- 
tion of  purgation.  So  much  at  least  lin- 
gered of  the  old. 

As  Achilles  slept  in  the  night  after  slay- 
ing Hector,  the  psyche  of  Patroklos,  still 
free  to  wander  about,  while  the  body  re- 
mained unburied,  still  possessed  of  reason 
and  will,  came  and  stood  above  Achilles' 
head,  *'  altogether  like  to  his  very  self,  in 
stature,  fair  eyes,  and  voice,  and  like  in  the 
raiment  he  wore ; "  and  spoke  to  him  thus  : 


The  Souls  in  Hades  75 

"  So  thou  dost  sleep,  Achilles,  but  me  thou 
hast  forgotten.  Not  when  I  lived  wast  thou 
remiss,  but  now  that  I  am  dead.  Make 
haste  and  bury  me,  that  I  may  pass  the 
gates  of  Hades.  The  spirits  keep  me  wide 
aloof,  these  phantoms  of  the  weary  dead, 
nor  suffer  me  to  join  with  them  beyond  the 
river,  and  vainly  do  I  roam  around  the  wide- 
doored  house  of  Hades.  Nay,  give  me,  I 
entreat  of  thee,  thy  hand,  for  nevermore 
shall  I  come  back  from  Hades'  land,  when 
ye  have  paid  me  once  my  due  of  fire ;  and 
nevermore  among  the  living  shall  we  sit 
without  the  circle  of  our  comrades  and 
there  take  counsel  with  each  other."  ^ 

The  psyches,  like  vain  shadows,  "strength- 
less  heads  of  the  dead,"  reft  of  thQpkre7teSy 
the  organs  of  will  and  emotion,^  flitted  hither 
and  thither  without  plan  or  purpose  or  hope. 
Thus  at  the  close  of  Achilles'  vision  :  "  So 
spake  he,  and  stretched  out  his  hands  but 
grasped  him  not,  for  vapor-like  the  spirit 
vanished  into  the  ground  with  squeaking, 
gibbering  cry.     And  in  marvel  sprung  up 


1 6  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

Achilles,  and  smiting  his  hands  together 
uttered  the  word  of  woe,  Ay  me,  verily  then 
there  is  in  the  dwellings  of  Hades  a  spirit, 
a  phantom,  hnlphreiies  it  hath  not  at  all." 

And  so  after  Odysseus  has  slain  the  suit- 
ors :  "  Cyllenian  Hermes  summoned  to- 
gether the  shades  of  the  suitors;  and  he 
held  in  his  hands  the  wand  that  is  golden 
and  fair,  wherewith  he  closes  to  sleep  the 
eyes  of  whomsoever  he  will,  while  others 
he  wakens  from  sleep.  Therewith  he 
started  them  forth  and  led  them  along, 
while  they  followed  on  with  squeaking, 
gibbering  cry.  And  just  as  when  bats  fly 
chirping  about  in  the  depth  of  some  mon- 
strous cave,  and  one  has  fallen  from  the 
cluster  on  the  rock,  and  they  cling  fast 
one  to  the  other,  so  they  went  on  and 
chirped  as  they  went,  but  Hermes  the 
helper  went  on  leading  them  down  the 
dank  ways,  past  the  streams  of  Oceanus, 
past  the  White  Rock,  along  by  the  gates 
of  the  Sun,  past  the  parish  of  Dreams,  till 
they  come  to  the    asphodel   moor,  where 


Odysseus  and  the  Psyches  77 

the  spirits  have  their  abode,  the  phantoms 
of  way-worn  men."  ^^ 

The  psyches  are  furthermore  repre- 
sented as  without  memory  or  the  power  of 
recognition,  and  in  the  Nekyia  it  is  only 
through  drinking  the  sacrificial  blood  from 
Odysseus'  trench  that  these  are  restored  to 
them.  11  "  And  I  drew  my  sharp  blade  from 
my  thigh  and  therewith  dug  a  pit  as  much 
as  a  cubit  this  way  and  that.  Around  it  I 
poured  my  libation  for  all  the  departed,  first 
with  the  milk  and  the  honey,  then  with 
sweet  wine,  and  thirdly  with  water ;  and 
over  it  barley-meal  white  I  strewed." 

Then  the  shades  flocked  about  the 
trench,  but  Odysseus  kept  them  off  with 
his  sword,  waiting  to  catch  sight  of  the  seer 
Teiresias,  who  was  the  prime  object  of  his 
search.  Among  them  he  saw  the  psyche 
of  his  mother ;  "  and  I  wept  at  sight  of  her 
and  pitied  her  in  my  heart,  but  even  so, 
sore  grieved  as  I  was  I  suffered  her  not  to 
draw  nigh  to  the  blood,  till  I  first  had  in- 
quired of  Teiresias." 


1 8  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

Finally,  after  Odysseus  had  found  the 
seer  and  talked  with  him,  he  asks  him  how 
he  may  bring  his  mother  to  recognize  her 
son :  *'  I  see  the  spirit  here  of  my  departed 
mother;  silent  she  sits  beside  the  blood, 
but  has  not  ventured  to  look  into  the  face 
of  her  son  nor  speak  with  him.  Pray  tell 
me,  master,  how  she  may  know  it  is  I.  So 
I  spoke,  and  straightway  he  gave  me  his 
answer:  *An  easy  saying  will  I  tell  thee 
and  fix  it  in  thy  heart :  whomsoever  of  those 
who  are  dead  and  gone  thou  lettest  draw 
nigh  to  the  blood,  he  will  speak  the  word 
of  truth ;  whom  thou  dost  begrudge  it,  he 
will  go  back  to  his  place.'  So  saying,  the 
spirit  entered  the  house  of  Hades,  the 
spirit  of  great  Teiresias,  who  had  told  the 
decrees  of  the  gods.  But  I  kept  my  place 
on  the  spot,  till  my  mother  came  near  and 
drank  the  dark  blood.  Straightway  she 
knew  me." 

It  is  to  Rohde  and  his  famous  book 
"Psyche"^  we  owe  it  —  a  book  which  I 
cannot  help  thinking  has  in  other  regards 


The  Hades  of  Homer  ig 

set  many  simple  things  awry  —  that  this 
service  of  blood  has  been  recognized  as 
a  reminiscence  or  survival  from  a  horizon 
of  faith  that  has  passed  away.  It  lingered 
with  other  rites  in  the  ceremonies  of  burial 
as  mere  form  divorced  from  the  earlier  faith, 
which  alone  gave  it  meaning  and  which  alone 
can  give  it  now  interpretation.  It  is  a  part 
of  the  old  cult  of  souls,  the  feeding  of  the 
dead. 

It  was  no  cheerful  place,  this  land  of 
Hades  where  the  shades  abode.  Slimy  and 
wet  were  its  paths,  where  the  gloomy  black 
poplar  and  willows  grew,  misty  and  murky 
was  its  air.  The  ''  asphodel  moor  "  whither 
the  souls  were  led  by  guide  Hermes  was 
not  the  green  pastures.  The  pale,  ghastly 
asphodel,  blooming  from  its  unsightly  stem, 
haunts  in  the  upper  world,  we  know,  the 
barren  lands,  and  that  was  the  part  it 
played  below.  "Son  of  Laertes,  seed  of 
Zeus,  Odysseus  of  many  wiles,  what  seekest 
thou  now,  wretched  man  ?  Why  hast  thou 
left  the  light  of  the  sun  to  come  here  and 


20  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

look  on  the    dead   and   see    this    joyless 
place?  "13 

Once,  and  once  only,  in  Homer  there  is  an 
allusion  to  the  Elysian  Fields  where  Rha- 
damanthys  dwells,  and  where  Menelaos, 
another  kinsman  of  Zeus,  will  find  a  place 
of  rest,  "  where  is  no  snow,  and  no  wintry 
storm,  nor  ever  the  torrent  of  rains,  but 
ever  the  light-breathing  zephyrs  Oceanus 
sends  from  the  west  with  cooling  for  men." 
But  this,  like  the  later  refuge  in  the  blessed 
islands,  is  only  for  here  and  there  one  of 
the  great  ones  of  this  earth,  such  as  are 
really  of  the  kin  of  gods,  and  it  was  indeed, 
as  such,  a  reminiscence  of  the  old  hero- 
worship,  now  for  a  time  in  abeyance,  but  to 
revive  again  in  a  reinvigorated  Hellas. 

For  men  after  the  flesh,  the  future  life 
offers  prospect  neither  of  bliss  nor  of  punish- 
ment. The  passage,  Odyssey  XI.  566-631, 
which  tells  of  the  punishments  of  Tityos, 
Tantalos,  Sisyphos,  has  been  unmistakably 
identified  by  Wilamowitz-Moellendorff  1*  as 
the  product  of  a  much  later  period,  the 


The  Homeric  Despair  21 

times  of  Solon  and  Peisistratos,  and  infused 
with  a  spirit  and  with  ideas  for  which  Ho- 
meric life  had  no  place. 

For  Homer's  men,  there  was  no  hope  for 
a  future  life  in  which  action  and  personality 
were  continued  with  values  derived  and 
transplanted  from  the  world  of  sunlight 
and  sense.  Hades  was  a  dreary  land  of 
banishment,  where  there  was  no  trial  or  joy, 
nothing  to  risk  and  nothing  to  achieve. 
All  this  belonged  to  the  life  under  the 
blessed  sunlight,  and  when  that  closed,  the 
mission  of  personality  was  at  an  end.  The 
earlier  faith  had  found  its  solace  in  the  con- 
tinuation of  personal  life  through  the  family 
and  the  tribe,  as  symbolized  in  the  continued 
sacrifices  for  the  dead.  Homeric  thought 
while  living  still  under  the  shadow  of  the 
tribal  idea  had  lost  in  large  measure  its 
consolation,  and  could  content  itself  only 
with  recognition  of  the  harsh  inevitable. 

Homer  stands  at  the  end,  not  the  be- 
ginning of  an  order  of  life,  civilization,  and 
thought.      His  voice  is   the   swan's  song 


22  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

of  an  order  that  like  all,  both  men  and 
communities,  which  have  lost,  before  or 
since,  the  power  to  trust  and  hope,  was 
going  down  the  ways  of  death.  It  told 
the  tales  of  a  mighty  world  whose  record 
is  left  in  the  walls  and  art  and  treasure 
of  Mykenai,  Tiryns,  Orchomenos,  and  told 
them  in  a  guise  of  thought  and  speech 
peculiar  to  the  old  Ionian  ^^  tribal  aristo- 
cracy, itself  doomed,  in  its  materialism  and 
its  lifeless  adherence,  to  the  forms  without 
the  spirit  of  the  old,  to  extinction  and  death. 
Between  Homer  and  the  new  Hellenic  life, 
that  found  its  centre  in  the  Athens  of  Pei- 
sistratos  and  Perikles,  there  is  a  deep  gulf 
fixed,  and  across  it  come  only  the  words  of 
Homer  and  the  thud  of  the  rhapsode's  foot. 
But  it  is  this  gulf  which  made  Homer's 
words  the  message  from  another  world, 
and  transformed  the  lays  to  a  sacred  book. 
In  the  period  between  750  and  600  b.  c. 
Greece  passed  through  a  change  that  made 
it  new  from  the  foundations.  It  was  the 
period  of  the  transition  from  mediaeval  to 


The  National  Awakening  2^ 

classical  Greece.  The  phenomenally  rapid 
colonial  expansion  of  the  century  from  750 
to  650  B.  c.  marks  the  occasion,  and  to  a 
large  extent  the  cause.  Within  this  cen- 
tury, prosperous  mercantile  colonies  were 
formed  along  the  coasts  of  the  Euxine,  the 
iEgean,  the  Mediterranean  from  Kolchis 
and  the  Crimea  at  the  east  to  Cumae  and 
Marseilles  on  the  west.  Through  the  con- 
trast with  peoples  of  other  race  and  tongue, 
the  Greek  people  of  many  tribes  and  cities 
awoke  to  a  consciousness  of  national  unity, 
and  the  Greater  Greece  was  born,  named 
with  the  new  name  Hellas. 

Trade  with  the  colonies,  and  through 
the  colonies  with  distant  inland  popula- 
tions, burst  into  sudden  vigor.  Everywhere 
the  Phoenician  trader  yielded  to  the  Greek. 
Industries  rapidly  developed  to  supply  the 
demands  of  trade.  The  smith,  the  cutler, 
the  potter,  the  weaver,  the  dyer,  the  wheel- 
wright, the  shoemaker,  and  the  shipbuilder, 
all  were  spurred  to  their  utmost  to  supply 
the  demands  of  the  new  export  trade. 


24  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

The  demand  for  labor  brought  in  the 
slave,  a  new  element.  Thus  far  Greece  had 
known  only  the  serf.  Wealth  poured  into 
the  land,  luxury  increased,  the  demands  of 
life  became  greater  and  more  diversified. 
The  coinage  of  money,  just  begun,  rapidly 
extended.  Barter  and  local  exchanges  gave 
way  to  the  money  standard.  Prices  were 
no  longer  fixed  by  local  conditions,  but  the 
remotest  villages  became  part  of  the  eco- 
nomic world  at  large. 

Men  flocked  from  the  farms  and  pastures 
into  the  cities.  The  new  wealth  came  often 
into  the  hands  of  others  than  the  old  no- 
bility. Timocracy  for  a  time  displaced 
aristocracy.  The  new  population  of  the 
mercantile  and  manufacturing  centres,  con- 
fused of  merchants,  tradesmen,  manufactur- 
ers, and  laborers,  sundered  from  their  old  so- 
cial and  political  ties,  could  no  longer  respect 
the  traditional  usages  and  classifications  of 
tribal  aristocratic  institutions,  which  in  the 
undisturbed  life  of  the  home  and  the  vil- 
lage had  never  been  questioned. 


New  Legal  and  Political  Conditions    25 

The  old  law  and  the  old  methods  of  ad- 
ministering justice  no  longer  suffice.  The 
new  conditions  demand  one  law  for  all, 
nobleman  and  laborer,  and  a  court  main- 
tained by  the  state,  and  they  demand  that 
the  caprice  of  the  judge  shall  be  limited  by 
definite  written  statutes.  Hence  appear  at 
this  time  all  over  Greece  the  great  codifiers, 
Zaleukos  the  Locrian,  Charondas  of  Ka- 
tana,  Pheidon  of  Corinth,  Pittakos  of  Mity- 
lene,  Dracon,  then  Solon,  in  Athens. 

In  the  political  life,too,  the  old  sacks  would 
not  do  for  the  new  wine.  The  old  ruling 
class  admits  to  its  ranks  here  and  there  the 
holders  of  the  new  wealth  and  so  com- 
promises with  the  new  situation,  but  the 
tiers  itat,  the  demos,  pushes  for  a  hearing, 
and  the  assembly  (or  ekklesid)  gradually 
asserts  its  claim  to  be  the  state.  In  the 
rapid  shifting  of  conditions  political  and 
economic,  it  was  the  peasant  and  the  coun- 
try squire  who  suffered  most,  but  as  is  al- 
ways the  case  when  economic  and  social 
dislodgments  such  as  this  occur  in  the  his- 


26  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

tory  of  a  people,  discontent  muttered  on 
every  hand.  Discontent  and  joy  are  both 
the  legitimate  children  of  opportunity. 

The  breaking  of  the  traditional  moulds 
in  which  the  old  tribal  life  was  set  had  re- 
leased the  individual  from  bondage  to  the 
destiny  of  that  group  into  which  he  was 
born,  and  given  him  the  opportunity,  and 
thrown  upon  him  the  responsibility  of  a 
man.  He  became  the  bearer  of  his  own 
destiny.  With  the  rise  of  individualism, 
culture,  thought,  literature,  institutions,  and 
life  hastened  in  widely  branching  differen- 
tiation to  assume  the  many-sided  type  that 
sets  the  Greece  of  the  sixth  and  following 
centuries  in  such  marked  contrast  to  the 
plain  naive  monotony  of  its  earlier  days  ; 
for  Greece  had  then  passed  out  of  child- 
hood into  the  years  of  discretion  and  man- 
hood. 

The  rapid  change  of  attitude  which  had 
thus  passed  over  the  Greek  people  in  re- 
spect to  the  world  of.  politics,  of  society,  of 
justice,  of  economics,  could  not  fail  to  seek 


Individualism  in  Religion  2y 

its  expression  in  terms  of  the  greater  world 
of  ultimate  destiny  and  purpose.  The  in- 
dividualism which  had  received  in  the  marts 
equal  opportunity,  and  had  demanded  of  the 
courts  equal  justice,  and  was  demanding  of 
the  state  equal  hearing,  and  which  in  life 
carried  the  burden  of  its  own  responsibility, 
could  no  longer  be  satisfied  before  the 
oracles  of  religion  with  a  destiny  that  in 
arbitrary  violence  robbed  personality  of  its 
fulfillment  or  merged  its  fate  and  its  hope 
in  the  fate  of  the  clan  or  the  race. 

The  period  with  which  we  have  been 
dealing  marked  the  rise,  and  the  following 
or  skth  century  the  full  development,  of 
the  Greek  faith  in  personal  immortality. 
From  the  seventh  century  on,  new  elements 
and  new  states,  Corinth  and  ^gina,  Megara 
and  Sparta  and  Thebes,  later  Athens,  came 
to  the  front  in  Greek  affairs. 

The  civilization  localized  in  the  eastern 
hem  of  Greek  life,  that  which  Homer  repre- 
sents, and  which  bears  the  name  of  Ionian, 
burned  itself  out  with  luxury  and  material- 


28  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

ism  in  the  exuberance  of  its  precocious 
bloom.  From  the  sturdy  mountain  peoples 
of  central  Hellas,  who  had  thus  far  re- 
mained in  the  background,  and  in  their  iso- 
lation from  the  culture  of  the  ^gean  had 
preserved  the  old  standards  of  simplicity 
and  the  old  usages  of  religion,  came  a  fresh 
infusion  of  Hellenic  blood,  new  aggressive 
vigor,  and  above  all  a  sturdier  faith.  It  was 
preeminently  the  Dorian  elements  which 
lent  to  this  second  wave  of  the  Greek  tide 
its  strength  and  mass.  As  it  advanced 
into  eastern  Greece,  it  took  on  the  color 
of  the  Eastern  culture,  but  its  life-strength 
was  the  primitive  old  Greek  spirit. 

Everywhere  the  old  simplicity  of  the 
earlier  Greek  religion  revived  and  became 
the  standard;  indeed,  with  these  peoples 
themselves  it  had  never  flagged  nor  failed. 
Soul-worship  in  all  its  various  forms,  offer- 
ings for  the  dead,  the  household  gods,  the 
gods  of  clans,  institutions  like  the  pryta- 
neion  table  as  a  feast  with  the  gods  of  the 
state,   hero-worship,   the  worship  of    cave 


The  New  Quest  of  Faith  29 

spirits  and  mountain  spirits,  consultation  of 
spirits  and  oracles,  in  all  these  and  many 
other  forms  emerged,  and  emerged  not 
from  long  sleep,  but  from  long  concealment. 
While  the  old  soul-worship  offered  a  soil 
upon  which  a  new  vision  and  assurance  of 
the  mission  and  fate  of  the  soul  beyond  the 
grave  might  arise,  it  could  not  in  itself 
afford  that  vision  or  satisfy  the  newborn 
craving  of  men.  It  dealt  only  with  the  re- 
lations of  the  living  to  the  dead,  not  with 
those  of  the  living  to  their  own  future 
estate.  Men  wanted  some  knowledge  of 
what  they  were  themselves  to  be  and  do  in 
the  other  life,  and  not  merely  to  be  occu- 
pied with  conciliating  the  attitude  of  the 
spirits  toward  this  life.  That  they  should 
live  after  death,  this  they  knew ;  no  form 
of  Greek  faith  had  ever  implied  or  taught 
anything  else ;  no  Greek  of  the  folk  had 
ever  thought  anything  else  ;  but  how  they 
were  to  live,  that  was  what  the  individual  in 
his  consciousness  of  a  personality  possess- 
ing worth,  meaning,  and  responsibility,  de- 


^o  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

sired  to  know.     To  this  desire  the  Mys- 
teries of  Eleusis  gave  answer  first. 

In  the  isolation  of  the  Thriasian  plain 
had  been  maintained  at  Eleusis,  time  out  of 
mind,  the  peculiar  cult  of  the  earth-goddess 
Demeter.  Something  had  invested  its 
strange  rites  with  an  unusual  sanctity,  but 
still  its  repute,  like  the  membership  in  its 
guild,  remained  until  near  the  end  of  the 
seventh  century  well-nigh  restricted  to  the 
immediate  locality.  It  was  a  local  institu- 
tion, owned  and  controlled  by  a  few  great 
families  of  the  parish. 

After  the  union  of  Eleusis  and  Attika, 
however,  and  the  reception  of  the  cult 
under  the  protection  and  guarantee  of  the 
state,  an  entirely  new  and  larger  career 
was  opened,  especially  when  Peisistratos, 
as  the  tribune  of  the  people,  reformed  and 
broadened  the  organization  of  the  worship 
so  as  to  open  it  to  universal  use  and  make 
it  worthy  of  the  state. 

So  it  became,  in  contrast  to  the  cults  of 
phratry  and   clan,  in   which    membership 


Eleusis  J I 

was  determined  by  birth,  an  eminently 
democratic  and  popular  association.  No 
one  was  excluded,  whatever  his  city  or  tribe. 
Citizens  and  metics,  men  and  women, 
slaves  and  children,  all  were  admitted.  It 
was  as  individuals  that  they  came  to  be 
cleansed,  and  to  gain  the  assurances  of 
future  blessing,  which  the  mysteries  had  to 
give,  and  so  no  wonder  that  it  was  the 
sixth  century,  the  century  of  the  awakened 
individualism,  in  which  the  mysteries  ac- 
quired their  unique  popularity. 

No  one  of  the  thousands  initiated  to 
the  rites  has  ever  betrayed  their  much  de- 
bated secret.  But  they  must,  we  can  be 
certain,  have  offered  something  which  an- 
swered to  the  quest  of  the  times.  "  Blessed 
is  he,"  says  Pindar,  ^^  "  who  having  seen 
these  rites  goeth  under  the  earth.  He 
knoweth  the  end  of  life,  he  knoweth  too  its 
god-disposed  beginning."  So  Sophocles  : " 
"Thrice  happy  they  among  mortals  who 
depart  into  Hades  after  their  eyes  have 
seen  these  rites ;  yea,  for  them  alone  is 


jj2  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

there  a  life ;  for  other  men  all  there  is 
ill;"  and  Plato  in  the  Ph^do:!^  "The 
founders  of  the  mysteries  would  appear  to 
have  had  a  real  meaning,  and  were  not  talk- 
ing nonsense,  when  they  intimated  in  a 
figure  long  ago,  that  he  who  passes  un- 
sanctified  and  uninitiated  into  the  world 
below  will  lie  in  a  slough,  but  that  he  who 
arrives  there  after  initiation  and  purifica- 
tion will  dwell  with  the  gods,"  and  in  the 
Frogs  Aristophanes  lightens  the  gloom  of 
the  nether  world  with  the  song  of  the  in- 
itiates, ^^  who  now  dance  in  veritable  flow- 
ery fields,  —  the  song  ending  with  the 
words  :  "  We  alone  have  the  sun  and  its 
gladsome  light,  we  who  have  taken  the 
sacred  vow,  and  have  lived  a  life  in  the 
fear  of  god  toward  stranger  and  toward 
friend." 

The  testimony  of  all  antiquity  to  the  in- 
spiring and  uplifting  influence  of  the  mys- 
teries is  impressively  unanimous.  No  voice 
is  raised  in  criticism.  Wherein  lay  their 
influence  and   convincing    power  we  can 


The  Mysteries  5^ 

only  surmise  from  the  sum  of  allusion.  It 
certainly  was  not  conveyed  through  doc- 
trine or  creed,  argument  or  exhortation, 
but  rather  through  some  form  of  drama  in 
which  the  loss  and  the  resurrection  of  Per- 
sephone was  the  central  event,  and  which 
like  the  Christian  drama  of  the  mass,2o 
quickening  the  dormant  faith,  offered  to 
the  beholder  some  suggestion  of  a  definite 
state  and  condition  of  future  existence.  No 
one  seems  to  have  questioned  the  validity 
or  authority  of  the  assurance  that  the  in- 
itiated, and  they  alone,  should  find  peace. 
They  who  saw  knew,  and  they  who  knew 
must  needs  attain.  It  was  no  question  of 
authority.  They  believed  gladly,  because 
constrained  by  their  yearning  to  believe. 
The  faith  and  its  authority  were  within 
themselves. 

Among  the  reforms  of  the  Eleusinian 
worship,  which  in  the  sixth  century  virtu- 
ally made  the  cult  anew,  and  gave  it  its 
universally  human  form,  and  which  all  tend 
to  attach  themselves  to  the  sponsorship  of 


^4  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

Peisistratos,  there  is  one  which  is  almost 
certainly  his  work,  and  which  apparently 
more  than  any  other  thing  served  to  give 
the  Mysteries  their  distinctive  character. 
This  was  the  introduction  of  the  youth 
lakchos  and  his  worship  into  the  family 
and  bond  of  Demeter  and  Persephone. 
Most  frequently  the  shifting  myths  repre- 
sent him  as  son  of  Zeus  and  Persephone, 
rescued  from  the  slaughter  of  the  Titans  to 
a  new  resurrection  life.  Sometimes  he  is 
a  son  of  Demeter,  sometimes  of  Dionysos, 
again  he  seems  merely  a  shadow  of  Diony- 
sos himself,  but  whatever  he  was,  certain 
it  is  that  his  character  and  spirit  was  entirely 
the  product  of  the  Dionysos  worship  as 
shapen  into  the  mystic  forms  of  the  Orphic 
theology.  He  was  unmistakably  the  child 
Dionysos  permanently  separated  and  differ- 
entiated out  of  the  whole  story  of  Dionysos 
and  made  a  distinct  type  by  himself.  Deme- 
ter searching  in  the  darkness  for  her  child 
that  was  lost  —  symbol  of  the  seed-corn 
buried  in  the  earth,  offered  a  ready  analogy 


Dionysos-Iakchos  55 

to  the  fostering  love  and  care  with  which 
the  Maenad  nurses  tended  the  babe  of  Nysa, 
—  the  springing  vegetation  of  the  new  be- 
ginning year.  Though  it  has  been  ques- 
tioned —  I  think  on  insufficient  grounds  — 
that  the  legend  of  Demeter  and  Persephone 
has  its  source  in  the  alternate  disappearance 
and  reappearance  of  the  grain,  it  cannot  be 
doubted  that  it  came  to  be  interpreted 
in  connection  with  that  phenomenon  and 
received  much  of  its  character  from  the 
analogy.  In  the  cult  of  Dionysos-Iakchos, 
however,  resided  from  the  beginning  a  direct 
meaning  for  the  experience  of  the  individ- 
ual human  life,  and  it  was  through  this 
type  of  lakchos  that  the  mystery  of  Per- 
sephone's return  was  given  its  relation  and 
application  to  the  resurrection  hope  of  hu- 
manity. The  mysteries,  in  other  words, 
were  made  what  they  were  by  the  ingraft- 
ing of  the  Dionysos  spirit. 

The  rise  of  Dionysos  worship  is  the  most 
important  single  phenomenon  in  the  history 
of  Greek  religion.     Unknown  to  the  loni- 


^6  Dlonysos  and  Immortality 

ans  of  Homer's  day  except  as  a  local  or  a 
stranger's  worship,  and  having  no  place 
within  the  Olympian  circle,  it  arose  from 
its  obscurity,  and  coming  out  from  the 
mountains  and  from  the  villages  of  pea- 
sants, with  the  fresh  flood  of  life  that  the 
seventh  century  brought  into  eastern 
Greece,  it  swept  into  city  and  state  as  the 
Salvation  Army  of  the  tiers  etaty  and  in  de- 
fiance of  all  the  opposition  of  the  staid  con- 
servatives and  of  the  aristocrats,  who,  cling- 
ing to  the  old  local  and  private  worships, 
would  hear  nothing  of  Demeter  or  Diony- 
sos,  it  forced  its  way  into  public  and  official 
recognition  preeminently  in  Attika,  domi- 
nated the  popular  interest,  infused  a  new 
life  into  the  dead  formalism  of  religion, 
quickened  and  energized  the  entire  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  life  of  Greece  to  the 
very  finger  tips.  It  was  the  religion  of 
enthusiasm. 

Its  primitive  form  we  know  in  outline 
from  the  practices  observed  among  the 
Thracians,  who  like  their  brother  Phrygi- 


Genesis  of  Dionysos  Worship         57 

ans  were  distinguished  as  its  devotees,  and 
through  whom  indirectly  the  worship  may 
well  have  found  introduction  into  Greece, 
but  usages  and  a  belief  in  general  analo- 
gous, and  resting  upon  the  same  general 
attitude  toward  nature,  are  found  widely 
scattered  among  European  peoples. 

A  primitive  belief  that  regards  the  life 
and  death  of  vegetation  after  the  analogies 
of  human  life,  attributes  the  withering 
winter  and  the  revival  of  spring  to  the  de- 
parture and  return,  or  the  slumbering  and 
reawakening,  of  the  psyches  or  spirits  whose 
reunion  with  matter  all  life  consists.  The 
spirits  or  daimones  of  the  vegetation  which 
has  slumbered  through  the  winter  must 
needs  be  wakened  or  recalled  in  spring. 
In  the  wild  dances  and  cries  of  those  who 
act  the  life  of  the  spirits  they  wish  to  re- 
call, the  bacchanal  ecstasies  have  probably 
their  root;  the  blood  of  the  torn  victim 
which  the  maenad  scatters  over  the  ground 
is  then  a  reminiscence  of  the  blood  which 
feeds  the  spirits  and  brings  them  to  con- 


^8  Dlonysos  and  Immortality 

sciousness  and  activity ;  the  maenad  who 
devours  the  raw  flesh  and  drinks  the  blood 
is  herself  inspired  to  the  ecstasy  which  re- 
presents the  revived  and  restored  life ;  the 
satyrs  who  followed  in  the  thiasos  of  Diony- 
sos  are  in  their  first  signification,  if  this  all 
be  true,  mere  embodiments  of  the  daimones 
of  vegetation  conceived  in  the  form  of  the 
victim  through  whose  death  they  come  to 
life,  and  following  in  the  train  of  their  lord 
Dionysos  himself,  who  is  Zagreus,  the  first- 
fruits  of  the  resurrection.  The  limitation  of 
his  festivals  to  the  period  between  the  winter 
solstice,  as  the  primitive  Christmas,  and  the 
vernal  equinox,  as  the  primitive  Easter,  and 
his  occupation  of  the  Delphic  shrine  during 
the  winter  months  while  Apollo  withdrew, 
would  also  conform  to  this  explanation  of 
the  cult  as  involving  the  nurture  and  revival 
of  the  vegetation  spirits. 

But  whether  this  be  or  be  not  the  native 
source  of  the  bacchanal  rites,  certain  it  is 
that  their  central  feature  from  the  earliest 
obtainable  evidence  is  the  **  ecstasy  "  of  the 


Genesis  of  Dionysos  Worship         ^g 

orgia.  In  many  different  forms  among 
people  of  various  civilization  there  appear 
ever  and  anon  these  practices  whereby  with 
different  means  the  body  is  benumbed  or 
otherwise  brought  into  apparent  subjection 
and  annulment  in  order  that  the  soul  may 
wander  in  realms  other  than  those  of  its 
every-day  experience,  and  commune  with 
spirits  outside  of  and  above  the  known. 
The  reiterated  cadences  of  music,  the  rhythm 
of  the  dance,  the  repetition  of  words,  con- 
tinued swaying  or  whirling  of  the  body,  the 
influences  of  narcotics  or  stimulants,  are  all 
used  to  produce  in  most  various  types,  from 
that  of  the  Indian  medicine  man  to  that  of 
the  Mahomedan  dervish,  these  superpersonal 
states  whereby  one  thinks  to  lose  himself  in 
union  with  the  spirit  world. 

Though  profoundly  tempered  from  its 
primitive  crudity  in  the  atmosphere  of 
Greece,  and  particularly  in  the  sobering 
atmosphere  of  Attika,  the  holy  madness  of 
the  Dionysos  revels  was  in  genesis  and  in 
spirit  one  and  the   same  with  them   all. 


40  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

Except  as  we  appreciate  this,  we  cannot 
understand  the  various  outgrowths  and  in- 
fluences of  the  Dionysiac  religion,  nor  indeed 
that  religion  itself. 

Even  the  drama,  choicest  of  its  products, 
and  impersonation,  upon  which  it  depends 
for  its  existence,  arise  out  of  the  Dionysiac 
effort  to  break  loose  from  one  life  and 
live  another.  That  which  was  at  the  be- 
ginning the  charm  of  the  drama,  and  has 
been,  so  far  as  it  is  true  to  itself,  ever  since, 
is  its  power  to  release  those  who  behold  it 
for  a  little  while  from  the  burden  and  in- 
thrallment  of  the  commonplace,  workaday 
life,  and  bathe  their  wearied  souls  in  dreams. 

This  is  the  very  heart  of  Dionysos,  and 
this,  too,  is  his  claim  to  control  of  the  fruit 
of  the  vine.  But  his  relation  to  the  vine 
is  no  more  than  an  incident.  His  mission 
is  to  lift  men  out  of  themselves  and  by  bring- 
ing them  into  communion  and  association 
with  that  above  and  without  them,  to  which 
they  are  unwittingly  akin,and  which  is  nobler, 
higher,  and  purer  than  they,  to  purge  and 


77?^  Orphic  Theology  41 

renew  them.  He  is  the  god  of  the  cleans- 
ing in  the  ideal.  As  such  Thebes,  sunk  in 
her  pollution,  calls  upon  him  by  the  lips  of 
the  Sophoclean  chorus  to  "  come  with  cleans- 
ing foot  over  the  slopes  of  Parnassos  or  over 
the  moaning  strait."  21 

His  faith  lay  hard  by  the  gate  of  mys- 
ticism, and  men  entered  abundantly  in.  In 
Southern  Italy,  Sicily,  and  Attika,  there 
arose  during  the  sixth  century  the  strange 
apparition  of  the  Orphic  theology.  With 
its  doctrine  of  the  body  as  a  prison  house 
and  of  the  soul  as  akin  to  God,  of  the  long 
toil  of  liberation,  and  the  devious  way  to 
reunion  with  its  own,  and  the  **  wheel  of 
births,"  it  is  a  strange  phenomenon  indeed, 
and  has  tempted  men  to  dream  of  some 
mysterious  channel  of  Eastern  influence, 
connecting,  despite  chronology,  even  with 
Buddha,  which  should  explain  this  and 
Pythagoras  as  well.22  But  sharp  as  the 
contrast  is  with  the  traditional  mood  of  Hel- 
lenic faith,  both  Orphism  and  Pythagoras 
are  the  products  unmistakably  and  directly 


42  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

of  Dionysos.  The  Orphic  religion  is  merely 
a  speculative  theology  of  the  Dionysiac 
faith,  confused  with  weird  fancies  and 
popular  superstition,  and  cast  in  poetic 
mould,  —  that  and  nothing  more. 

Between  the  essential  Pantheism  of  In- 
dian thought  and  the  mystical  Idealism 
involved  in  that  feature  of  Greek  thought 
we  are  now  discussing,  there  was  in  reality 
no  highway.  To  the  one  the  All  is  the 
god ;  the  visible  world  of  material  is  his 
unfolding ;  there  is  from  it  no  escape  ;  weal 
is  found  in  submission  and  accord.  To  the 
other  the  material  things  of  sense  are  the 
soul's  ball  and  chain;  the  divine  has  cre- 
ated them,  but  is  not  in  them  and  they  are 
not  of  him  ;  weal  is  found  in  liberation  and 
flight.  The  Dionysiac  *' way  of  salvation  " 
is  the  way  of  liberation  and  cleansing.  The 
soul  is  in  essence  divine.  Because  of  its 
sin  it  is  shut  off  in  the  world  of  body 
and  matter.     The  body  is  a  prison. 

Now  and  again  in  ecstatic  vision  the  god- 
born  soul  escapes  from  its  duress,  realizes 


The  Uplifting  Power  of  the  New  Insight  4^ 

its  higher  being  and  mission,  and  revels  in 
communion  with  its  own.  How  to  be  rid 
forever  of  the  ball  and  chain,  how  to 
turn  the  brief  vision  into  a  continuous  life  — 
that  is  the  Dionysiac  problem  of  salvation. 
Death  will  not  accomplish  it.  Through 
the  long  circuit  of  births  the  soul  must  toil 
on,  freeing  itself  more  and  more  from  the 
dross,  until  at  the  distant  goal,  "rescued 
from  misery  it  breathes  free  at  last." 

In  the  recipe  for  cleansing  and  liberation, 
mortification  of  the  body  and  moral  asceti- 
cism found  small  place,  or  none  at  all.  The 
question  of  morals  ^3  was  for  that  matter  in 
no  wise  involved.  It  was,  if  we  may  so  term 
it,  a  metaphysical  salvation,  not  a  moral  one, 
that  men  were  seeking.  The  means  of  res- 
cue, too,  which  was  proposed,  was  positive, 
not  negative,  —  the  expulsive  power  of  the 
new  insight,  we  might  name  it,  or  better, 
the  tiplif ting  power  of  the  new  insight. 

The  force  and  influence  of  this  new  de- 
parture in  the  life  of  Greece  did  not  exhaust 
itself  in  religious  fervors.    It  laid  hold  upon 


44  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

all  the  thought  of  men  and  gave  shape  even 
to  the  forming  moulds  of  philosophic  re- 
flection. Without  Dionysos  and  Orphism 
there  could  have  been,  for  instance,  no 
Plato.  Plato's  philosophy  builds  on  a  faith, 
and  that  faith  is  Dionysism.  Everywhere 
in  his  thinking  2*  religion  gleams  through 
the  thin  gauze  of  philosophic  form,  and  ex- 
cept his  system  be  understood  as  a  religion 
and  as  a  part  of  the  history  of  Greek  re- 
ligion, it  yields  no  self-consistent  interpre- 
tation, and  is  not  intelligible  either  in  its 
whence  or  whither.  The  things  many  and 
various  he  has  to  tell  about  the  Ideas  refuse 
to  take  orderly  place  and  position  in  a  doc- 
trine of  logical  realism  such  as  metaphysics 
teaches,  but  are  satisfied  all  in  a  doctrine 
of  spirituality  and  the  higher  life,  such  as 
poetry  and  religion  can  preach. 

The  universe  which  Plato  feels  is  in  sub- 
stance the  universe  which  the  Dionysos  en- 
thusiasms presuppose.  There  is  a  world  of 
the  outward  and  material,  ever  shifting,  un- 
steady, perishable,  behind  it  is  a  world   of 


Plato's  Religion  4^ 

the  unchanging  norm,  the  essential  pur- 
pose, the  supreme  reahty.  To  the  former 
belongs  the  body,  to  the  latter  by  nature 
and  source  the  soul.  This  mortal  life  is  an 
entanglement  of  the  soul  in  the  meshes  of 
the  material.  Still,  through  the  perverting 
and  obscuring  medium  of  that  which  enfolds 
it  the  soul  catches  glimpses  of  the  true, 
and  gathers  intimations  of  its  own  kinship 
with  the  ideal  and  the  abiding.  All  the 
Platonic  arguments  for  the  immortality  of 
the  soul,  in  the  Phaedrus,  in  the  Republic,^ 
in  the  Phaedo,  diverse  as  they  seem,  unite 
as  being  merely  various  ways  or  devices 
for  setting  forth  a  central  faith  whose  first 
inspiration  had  come  from  the  Dionysos  cult. 
The  influence  of  Eleusis  and  of  Dionysos 
covers  all  the  latter  day  of  Hellenic  life, 
but  peculiarly  strong  is  it  written  upon 
the  thought  and  in  the  literature  of  the 
closing  years  of  the  sixth  century  and  of 
the  greater  portions  of  the  fifth.  The  sixth 
century  marked  a  period  of  genuine  reli- 
gious revival,  —  not  a  revival  merely  of  ob* 


46  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

servances  and  rites,  but  a  stirring  of  the 
personal  interest  in  matters  of  faith  and 
personal  destiny  that  approaches  the  devel- 
opment of  what  we  know  as  personal  re- 
ligion. We  miss,  to  be  sure,  from  our  point 
of  view,  the  firm  outlines  of  a  formulated 
theologic  faith  concerning  personal  relation 
to  the  eternal,  such  as  we  are  wont  to  iden- 
tify with  personal  religion ;  but  men  were 
thinking  in  terms  of  individual  responsi- 
bility, and  forms  of  theology  distinct  from 
the  state  and  tribal  types  were  emerging 
and  were  preparing  the  way  for  the  ration- 
alism of  which  Euripides  stands  in  litera- 
ture as  the  early  exponent. 

Expressions  concerning  the  life  after 
death,  however  much  they  might  cling  to 
the  traditional  moulds  of  the  old-time,  or  to 
what  we  may  call  the  Homeric,  faith  regard- 
ing the  geography  of  Hades,  showed,  as 
contrasted  with  the  Homeric  view,  a  radi- 
cal change  in  the  conception  of  the  life 
itself.     Thus  Pindar  :  26 

"Victory  setteth  free  the  essayer  from 


Pindar  4J 

the  struggle's  griefs,  yea,  and  the  wealth 
that  a  noble  nature  hath  made  glorious 
bringeth  power  for  this  and  that,  putting 
into  the  heart  of  man  a  deep  and  eager 
mood,  a  star  far  seen,  a  light  wherein  a 
man  shall  trust,  if  but  the  holder  thereof 
knoweth  the  things  that  shall  be,  how  that 
of  all  who  die  the  guilty  souls  pay  penalty, 
for  all  the  sins  sinned  in  this  realm  of  Zeus 
One  judgeth  under  earth,  pronouncing  sen- 
tence by  unloved  constraint. 

"  But  evenly  ever  in  sunlight  night  and 
day  an  unlaborious  life  the  good  receive, 
neither  with  violent  hand  vex  they  the 
earth  nor  the  waters  of  the  sea,  in  that  new 
world ;  but  with  the  honored  of  the  gods, 
whosoever  had  pleasure  in  keeping  of  oaths, 
they  possess  a  tearless  life ;  but  the  other 
part  suffer  pain  too  dire  to  look  upon. 

"Then  whosoever  have  been  of  good  cour- 
age to  the  abiding  steadfast  thrice  on 
either  side  of  death,  and  have  refrained 
their  souls  from  all  iniquity,  travel  the  road 
of  Zeus  unto  the  tower  of  Kronos ;  there 


^8  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

around  the  islands  of  the  blest  the  ocean 
breezes  blow,  and  golden  flowers  are  glow- 
ing, some  from  the  land  on  trees  of  splen- 
dor, and  some  the  water  feedeth,  with 
wreaths  whereof  they  entwine  their  hands  : 
So  ordereth  Rhadamanthos'  just  decree, 
whom  at  his  own  right  hand  hath  ever  the 
father  Kronos,  husband  of  Rhea,  throned 
above  all  worlds." 

Similarly  in  the  following  fragments  of 
dirges :  — 

"For  them  shineth  below  the  strength 
of  the  sun  while  in  our  world  it  is  night, 
and  the  space  of  crimson-flowered  meadows 
before  their  city  is  full  of  the  shade  of 
frankincense  trees,  and  of  fruits  of  gold. 
And  some  in  horses,  and  in  bodily  feats,  and 
some  in  dice,  and  some  in  harp-playing 
have  delight ;  and  among  them  thriveth  all 
fair-flowered  bliss ;  and  fragrance  streameth 
ever  through  the  lovely  land,  as  they 
mingle  incense  of  every  kind  upon  the 
altars  of  the  gods.^ 

"  By  happy  lot  travel  all  unto  an  end  that 


Pindar  49 

giveth  them  rest  from  toils.  And  the  body 
indeed  is  subject  unto  the  great  power  of 
death,  but  there  remaineth  yet  alive  a 
shadow  of  the  life;  for  this  only  is  from 
the  gods  ;  and  while  the  limbs  stir,  it  sleep- 
eth,  but  unto  sleepers  in  dreams  discover- 
eth  oftentimes  the  judgment  that  draweth 
nigh  for  sorrow  or  for  joy."  ^^ 

Most  significant  here,  as  betraying  how 
fully  Pindar's  thought  shaped  itself  in  Dio- 
nysiac  or  Orphic  moulds,  are  the  expressions 
"this  only  is  from  the  gods,"  and  "while 
the  limbs  stir,  it  sleepeth."  The  real  ex- 
istence of  the  soul  as  the  divine  element  of 
man's  life  is  the  existence  freed  from  the 
constraint  of  the  body  which  dulls  it  and 
prevents  it  from  seeing  and  knowing  clearly. 
This  is  Paul's  "Now  we  see  in  a  mirror 
darkly." 

Another  more  distinctively  Orphic  touch 
is  involved  in  a  third  fragment :  "  But  from 
whomsoever  Persephone  accepteth  atone- 
ment for  an  ancient  woe,  their  souls  unto 
the  light  of  the  sun  above  she  sendeth 


^o  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

back  again  in  the  ninth  year.  And  from 
those  souls  spring  noble  kings,  and  men 
swift  and  strong  and  in  wisdom  very  great : 
and  through  the  after-time  they  are  called 
holy  heroes  among  men."  ^9 

Sophocles  represents  his  Antigone  as  act- 
ing in  this  present  world  of  transitory  and 
superficial  law  in  respect  for  the  "  unwrit- 
ten, irrefragable  ordinances  of  the  gods,"  ^^ 
which  "not  for  to-day  alone  and  for  yester- 
day but  forever  have  their  life,  —  and  no 
man  knoweth  whence  they  are."  ^i  These 
laws  are  the  laws  of  Hades  as  the  great 
other,  outer  world  of  the  eternal,  and  they 
govern  the  judgments  at  the  bar  of  Dik6, 
who  "  dwells  with  the  nether  gods."  In  defi- 
ance of  temporal  law  she  performs  the 
burial  rites  of  her  brother :  "  Fair  thing  it 
is  for  me  in  doing  this  to  die ;  dear  shall  I 
lie  with  him  my  dear  one,  having  wrought 
a  pious  crime ;  for  longer  is  the  time  that  I 
must  please  the  ones  below  than  those  up 
here ;  since  there  forever  shall  I  lie."  ^  In 
obeying  the  laws  of  the  nether  kingdom 


Sophocles  5/ 

she  counts  herself  already  its  subject  and 
its  citizen ;  such  she  has  become  that  she 
may  minister  unto  those  of  her  kindred  who 
dwell  within  it.  Her  sister  Ismene,  who  in 
fear  of  the  laws  of  the  upper  world  has 
withheld  her  aid,  she  counts  as  of  this 
world.  "  Thou  art  alive,  but  my  soul  long 
since  passed  into  death,  to  minister  unto 
those  who  are  dead."  ^^ 

It  is  in  the  light  of  this  sense  for  a  con- 
tinuance of  personal  ties  beyond  the  grave, 
that  the  Attic  sepulchral  monuments,  with 
their  peaceful  scenes  of  family  reunion  and 
association,  must  find  their  rightful  interpre- 
tation. It  remained  now  for  Plato,  in  har- 
mony with  this  newly  quickened  conception 
of  a  real  personal  continuance  after  death 
and  continuance  in  a  life  bearing  relations 
to  the  life  on  earth,  to  offer  the  first  philo- 
sophic argument  for  the  immortality  of  the 
soul. 

The  chirping  psyches  of  Homer's  nether 
world  were  mere  phantom  apologies  to  a 
stolid,  helpless  belief  in  continuance;  the 


52  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

offerings  to  the  dead  practised  among  the 
early  non-Homeric  Greeks  were  a  tribute 
to  the  idea  of  tribal  and  family  unity.  This 
was  all  that  the  older  faith  of  the  Greeks 
could  offer. 

With  Dionysos,  however,  there  came  into 
Greek  religion  and  thought  a  new  element, 
an  utterly  new  point  of  view.  He  taught 
his  followers  to  know  that  the  inner  life  of 
man,  the  soul,  is  of  like  substance  with  the 
gods,  and  that  it  may  commune  with  the 
divine.  Before  the  days  of  his  revelation 
there  had  been  between  the  generations  of 
mortal  men,  who  fell  like  the  generations  of 
leaves,  and  the  undying  gods  whose  food 
is  ambrosia  and  whose  drink  nectar,  a  gulf 
fixed  deep  and  impassable.  After  his  reve- 
lation the  soul  was  divine  and  might  claim 
an  immortality  like  to  that  of  the  gods. 

Dionysos  had  waited  long  in  the  vales  of 
Nysa  and  Parnassos,  buried  like  the  uncut 
gem  in  crude  and  uncouth  guise,  but  when 
the  need  and  desire  of  men  sought  after 
him  he  came  to  help. 


A  Touch  of  Human  Need  33 

A  human  hand,  lifting  its  grasp  toward 
immortality,  stands  a  mute  witness  to  a  con- 
sciousness arising  in  the  single  human  soul 
that  it  has  a  meaning  in  itself,  that  it  has  a 
purpose  and  a  mission  of  its  own,  that  it 
holds  direct  account  with  the  heart  of  the 
world,  and  of  a  world  to  whose  peerage  it 
belongs  and  with  whose  plan  and  reason  it 
has  rights  and  a  hearing. 

The  faiths  of  men  are  quoted  under  va- 
rious names  and  are  set  forth  in  vari- 
ous articles,  but  we  may  not  be  confused 
thereby,  for  men  are  men  ;  control  of  nature 
has  grown  stronger  and  history  longer  since 
the  day  when  Greece  first  frankly  and 
straight  looked  nature  and  life  in  the  face, 
but  man  himself  stays  much  the  same,  — 
given  the  same  conditions,  the  plain  touch 
of  need  makes  all  the  centuries  kin. 

If  in  the  throb  of  Dionysos'  passion  men 
seem  to  gain  an  insight  into  the  spiritual 
harmonies  of  nature,  and  intimations  of 
their  own  potential  kinship  with  the  divine, 
which  cold  reason  and  dull  sense  had  not 


^4  Dionysos  and  Immortality 

availed  to  give,  it  was  still  dim,  groping 
vision ;  but  yet  the  face  was  set  thither, 
where,  in  a  later  day,  —  a  day  for  which 
Greece  and  Dionysos  prepared,  —  men 
learned  through  the  Convincing  Love  to 
know  and  live  the  eternity  within  them. 


NOTES 


Note  i,  page  8. 
J.  Lippert:  Die  Religionen  der  europdischen 
Culturvolker  in  ihrein  geschichtlichen  Ursprunge, 
Berlin,  1881 ;  E.  Rohde  :  Psyche;  Seelenculf  und 
Unsterblichkeitsglaube  unter  den  Griechen,  2d  ed., 
Freiburg,  1898,  pp.  i  ff;  De  Coulanges:  The  An- 
cient City,  Eng.  transl.  pp.  28  £f. 

Note  2,  page  8. 
It  certainly  is  unsafe  to  speak  of  an  Indo-Euro- 
pean religion  without  making  some  explanation  of 
what  may  be  meant  by  such  a  term,  and  what  may 
be  supposed  to  be  known  or  knowable  concerning 
such  a  subject.  It  is  no  longer  to  be  assumed  that 
all  the  peoples  who  appear  in  history,  possessed  of 
an  Indo-European  tongue,  are  necessarily  in  all 
their  make-up  descendants  of  what  is  called  the 
Indo-European  race.  The  presumption  is  against 
it,  and  so  is  the  ethnological  evidence.  There  was 
certainly  an  Indo-European  language  ;  therefore 
there  was  once  a  people  who  spoke  it.  The  exten- 
sion of  the  language  through  conquest  —  the  con- 


^6  Notes 

quered  peoples  gradually  accepting  the  language 
of  the  conquerors —  is  doubtless  a  more  important 
point  of  view  than  that  of  its  extension  by  migra- 
tion and  increase  of  the  racial  stock.  The  breaking 
up  into  distinct  languages  must,  it  seems  likely, 
be  accounted  for  in  large  measure  through  the 
influence  of  the  aUen  tongues  of  the  elements  ab- 
sorbed. The  Greeks,  for  instance,  were  evidently 
not  of  one  race ;  i.  e.,  those  who  at  the  beginning 
of  history  were  speakers  of  Greek,  were  to  a  large 
extent  representatives  of  the  primitive  populations 
inhabiting  Greece  before  the  Indo-European  north- 
men  entered  the  land.  The  fair-haired,  blue-eyed 
people  were,  in  the  earliest  times,  a  superior  class, 
distinguished  from  the  dark-complexioned  peoples 
who  gradually  absorbed  the  former,  so  far  as  phy- 
siological type  was  concerned. 

The  early  hopes  of  the  science  of  comparative 
religion,  as  represented  by  Kuhn  and  Max  Miiller, 
were  based  on  a  false  confidence  in  the  methods  of 
comparative  philology.  It  was  expected  that  com- 
parison of  the  various  cults  of  the  different  Indo- 
European  peoples  would  yield  a  restoration  of  the 
primitive  proethnic  cults,  just  as  the  comparison  of 
word-forms  yielded  a  possible  restoration  of  the 
primitive  Indo-European  vocabulary.  The  result 
has  defeated  these  hopes.  Comparison  fails  to  dis- 
cover any  considerable  number  either  of  names  of 


Notes  37 

deities,  or  of  fixed  outlines  of  divine  personalities, 
or  of  systematic  forms  of  belief.  The  organization 
of  the  different  religions  of  the  so-called  Indo- 
European  peoples  is  evidently  in  the  main  their 
own  separate  achievement.  Whether  this  has  been 
brought  about  through  the  influence  of  the  local 
beliefs  and  cults  of  the  absorbed  populations,  or 
developed  directly  out  of  the  materials  of  a  primi- 
tive Indo-European  religion,  has  not  yet  proved 
determinable,  but  many  facts  point  in  the  direction 
of  the  former  view.  When  we  speak,  therefore, 
of  a  proethnic  Indo-European  religion,  we  cannot 
refer  to  a  definite  system  of  personified  powers,  but 
only  to  a  general  attitude  in  character  of  belief 
which  the  broadest  comparison  of  the  different  re- 
ligions shows  to  be  present  as  a  basis  in  all  of 
them. 

Note  3,  page  12. 
When  we  venture  to  refer  to  a  prae-Homeric 
religion,  it  must  be  understood  that  we  are  here 
beyond  the  range  of  documentary  evidence.  In- 
ferences from  the  known  facts  of  later  Greek  re- 
ligion, from  the  facts  of  other  Indo-European 
religions,  and  from  the  scanty  and  as  yet  imper- 
fectly interpreted  remains  of  Mycenaean  civiliza- 
tion constitute  our  only  guidance.  The  altar-pit  in 
the  courtyard  at  Tiryns,  and  the  evidence  that  the 


$8  Notes 

Mycenaean  tombs  were  virtually  houses  of  the  dead, 
to  which  the  altar-pits  above  them  brought  the 
blood-offering  and  food  for  the  departed,  join  with 
the  prior  facts  of  Indo-European  religion  and  the 
later  facts  of  historic  Greek  religion  to  confirm  a 
tolerably  certain  line  of  historical  development. 

Note  4,  page  12. 
"  Wir  haben  hinreichenden  Grund,  einen  Seelen- 
cult,  eine  Verehrung  des  im  Menschen  selbst  ver- 
borgen  lebenden,  nach  dessen  Tode  zu  selbstan- 
digem  Dasein  ausscheidenden  Geisterwesens  auch 
in  Griechenland,  wie  wohl  iiberall  auf  Erden,  unter 
den  altesten  Bethatigungen  der  Religion  zu  ver- 
muthen.  Lange  vor  Homer  hat  der  Seelencult  in 
den  Grabgewolben  zu  Mykene  und  an  anderen 
Statten  altester  Cultur  sich  seine  Heiligthiimer 
erbaut."  E.  Rohde :  Dz'e  Religion  der  Griechen, 
Rectoratsrede,  Heidelberg,  1894.  Except  as  this 
fundamental  point,  established  by  the  brilliant  ar- 
gument of  Rohde  in  his  Psyche^  is  accepted,  no  in- 
telligible connection  between  the  Greek  faiths  of 
different  times  and  places  is  possible,  —  and  what 
is  more,  no  connection  of  the  Greek  faith  with  the 
Indo-European  that  lay  behind  it. 

Note  5,  page  12. 
H.  Oldenberg :  Die  Religion  des  Veda,  pp.  543  £f. 


Notes  39 

Note  6,  page  13. 
See  Odyssey  X\.  220 ff. 

Note  7,  page  14. 
Rohde  {Psyche,  pp.  27  ff.)  connects  the  Ho- 
meric freedom  from  dreamed-of  ghosts  with  the 
practice  of  cremation.  He  even  attributes  the 
introduction  of  the  practice  to  a  desire  to  be 
rid  of  the  spirits  through  help  of  the  "cleans- 
ing force  of  fire."  The  primitive  notion  that 
the  spirits  haunted  the  place  where  the  body 
remained,  and  hung  about  the  body  itself,  would 
naturally  lead  to  the  belief  that  the  total  destruc- 
tion of  the  body  would  remove  this  lure  to  the 
spirits  and  take  from  them  the  way  of  approach  to 
the  homes  of  the  living.  The  difficulty  with 
Rohde's  suggestion  is,  however,  that  it  takes  no 
account  of  the  fact  that  cremation  appears  as  an 
institution  so  widespread  among  Indo-European 
peoples  as  to  demand  almost  certainly  a  place 
among  primitive  Indo-European  usages. 

It  may  have  been  in  vogue  only  among  certain 
tribes,  or  have  been  employed  at  certain  times,  as  in 
war  or  during  absence  from  home,  or  for  certain 
classes,  as  the  kings  and  chieftains  ;  no  solution 
of  the  strange  problem  has  yet  been  found,  but 
surely  we  are  not  justified  in  connecting  a  new  de- 
parture in  faith,  such  as  Rohde  thinks  the  Homeric 


6o  Notes 

liberation  from  the  soul-cults  represents,  with  a 
practice  which  is  old  and  not  new.  The  history  of 
cremation  in  its  connection  with  the  primitive  be- 
liefs concerning  immortality  is  a  subject  demanding 
a  much  more  careful  and  comprehensive  investi- 
gation than  has  yet  been  accorded  it.  Facts  in 
abundance  are  known  concerning  the  usages  of 
various  times  and  peoples,  but  no  principle  yet  dis- 
covered has  served  to  give  these  facts  an  intelli- 
gent connection. 

Note  8,  page  1 5. 
See ///^^  XXII I.  66  ff. 

Note  9,  page  15. 
Teiresias  the  seer  alone  an  exception. 

Note  10,  page  17. 
See  Odyssey  XXIV.  i  £E. 

Note  ii,  page  17. 
See  Odyssey  XI.  24ff. 

Note  12,  page  18. 
E.  Rohde :  Psyche;  Seelencult  und  Unsterblich- 
keitsglaube  unter  den  Griechen,  2d  ed.,  Freiburg, 
1898. 

Note  13,  page  20. 

See  Odyssey  XI.  92  ff  (Teiresias  to  Odysseus). 


Notes  6i 

Note  14,  page  20. 
See  Homerische  Untersuchungen,  I99ff. 

Note  15,  page  22. 
The  fundamental  materials  of  the  Homeric  epic 
are  undoubtedly  ^Eolic  or   North  Greek  in  their 
source.     The  language  alone  is  enough  to  betray 
this.    iEolic  forms  of  the  language  have  been  pre- 
served in  the  midst  of  the  prevailing  Ionic  where- 
ever  the  Ionic  equivalents  would  not  suit  the  metri- 
cal necessities.     This  concerns,  however,  only  the 
formation  of  the  peculiar,  half-artificial  idiom  which 
finally  became  the  rhapsodic  fashion  of  speech. 
The  civilization  to  which  the  songs  as  we  have  them 
were  addressed  was  that  of  the  old  Ionic  life  of  the 
central  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  and  in  the  current  ideas 
of  this  civilization  we  must  believe  the  setting  of 
the  stories  was  moulded.     Homer  therefore  repre- 
sents preeminently  the  life  and  atmosphere  of  the 
early  Ionia  in  the  period  which  antedates  the  rise 
of  extensive  commerce  and  the  sending  out  of  the 
commercial  colonies.     That  which  gave  Homer  so 
soon  in  the  ears  of  the  succeeding  generations  the 
ring  of  the  remote  and  the  heroic  was  the  rapid 
shifting  in  scene  and  conditions  introduced  by  the 
ninth  and  the  eighth  centuries.     Life  changed  from 
the  tribal-patriarchal  to  the  urban-commercial  basis. 
Coupled  with  this  was  the  circumstance  that  the 


62  Notes 

memories  of  the  old  Achaean  civilization  which  had 
yielded  the  first  materials  of  the  stories  were  rapidly 
dulled  into  remote  traditions  by  the  disappearance 
of  the  states  and  the  peoples  that  had  carried  the 
burden  of  this  civilization.  This  disappearance  is 
in  some  way  connected  with  the  emergence  of  the 
Dorians  in  eastern  Greece.  Here  we  confront  the 
problem  of  the  "  Dorian  Migrations." 

Note  i6,  page  31. 
Pindar:  Bergk,  Poet.  Lyr.  Fragm.,  137. 

Note  17,  page  31. 
Sophocles  :  Fragm.,  719  (Dind.). 

Note  18,  page  32. 
Plato :  PhcEdo,  p.  69  (transl.  Jowett). 

Note  19,  page  32. 
**  Let  us  hasten —  let  us  fly  — 
Where  the  lovely  meadows  lie; 
Where  the  living  waters  flow  ; 
Where  the  roses  bloom  and  blow. 
Heirs  of  immortality. 
Segregated,  safe  and  pure, 
Easy,  sorrowless,  secure ; 
Since  our  earthly  course  is  run, 
We  behold  a  brighter  sun. 


Notes  63 

Holy  lives  —  a  holy  vow — 
Such  rewards  await  them  now." 
Frere's  transl.  of  Aristophanes,  Frogs^  448-459. 

Note  20,  page  33. 
For  a  most  illumining  view  of  the  influence  of 
the  mysteries  upon  the  early  Christian  ritual,  see 
E.  Hatch  :  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and  Usages 
upon  the  Christian  Church.  Hibbert  Lectures,  1888. 
Lect.  X.  pp.  281  £E. 

Note  21,  page  41. 
Sophocles  :  Antigone.,  1143-45. 

Note  22,  page  41. 
For  the  most  explicit  statement  and  discussion 
of  such  views,  see,  e.g..,  Leopold  von  Schroeder: 
Pythagoras  und  die  Inder,  Leipzig,  1884;  Richard 
Garbe :  The  Connection  between  Indian  and  Greek 
Philosophy.  An  address  delivered  before  the 
Philol.  Congress  at  Chicago,  July,  1893  {Monisiy 
1894,  p.  176  and  following). 

Note  23,  page  43. 

The  Orphic  theology  has  often  been  pronounced 

un-Hellenic  in  character  and  tone.      Those  who 

would   find  for  it  an  Eastern  or  Egyptian  origin 

emphasize  its  supposed  discord  with  Greek  ideas. 


64  Notes 

Surely  it  would  be  a  stranger  and  interloper  if  it 
proposed  to  a  Greek  world  an  ethical  reformation 
based  upon  a  code  of  morals.  Nothing  could  have 
been  more  un-Hellenic  than  that.  But  herein  lies 
the  core  of  the  misunderstanding.  Orphism  con- 
tained no  suggestion  of  moral  reform,  and  its  ec- 
stasies no  more  proposed  an  influence  upon  conduct 
or  morals  than  the  "  blessed  seasons  "  of  a  negro 
revival  meeting.  If  Orphism  is  non-Greek,  then  is 
also  the  idealism  of  Plato,  which  in  its  religious 
bearings  is  its  offspring.  Both  are,  however,  pro- 
foundly Greek,  and  only  reflect  the  all-pervading 
dualism  of  the  popular  psychology.  What  was  new 
in  Orphism  and  in  its  common  basis  Bacchism  was 
the  element  of  enthusiasm,  the  communion  with  the 
divine.  It  was  the  "  evangehcal "  religion  of  Greece. 
It  may  be  cause  for  wonder  that  a  religious  move- 
ment of  such  freshness  and  vigor  should  apparently 
have  lost  itself  in  the  marshes,  and  have  exercised 
no  more  definite  influence  upon  the  thought  of  the 
after-world.  To  this  it  can  first  of  all  be  said  that 
the  real  extent  of  its  influence  may  easily  have  been 
underestimated.  Orphism  in  its  organized  form 
passed  quickly  out  of  sight  in  the  fifth  century,  but 
its  fundamental  idea  as  expressed  in  Bacchism  was 
absorbed  into  the  common  thought  of  Greece.  It 
must  furthermore  be  noticed  that  it  came  as  an 
infusion  into  Greek  religion  at  a  time  when  this 


Notes  65 

religion  by  reason  of  shifting  historical  conditions 
was  moving  toward  inevitable  decline.  Greek  re- 
ligion was  a  thing  of  the  polis^  the  city  built  of  the 
amalgamated  tribes  and  clans.  With  the  polis  it 
stood,  and  with  the  fall  of  the  poHs  as  a  unit  of 
government  it  fell.  Its  gods  were  chief  citizens 
of  the  polls,  members  honorary  of  the  associated 
guilds.  When  a  greater  world  of  commerce,  inter- 
course, manners,  and  ideas  arose,  in  which  the  cities 
came  more  and  more,  in  spite  of  all  theory  to  the 
contrary,  to  be  no  more  than  nuclei  of  population, 
the  city  gods  and  the  city  religions  did  not  arise 
to  meet  its  need.  Not  even  Olympus  raised  Zeus 
high  enough  to  oversee  the  land.  The  allegiance 
of  men  gradually  transferred  itself  from  the  polis  to 
the  empire  as  the  greater  state,  —  even  when  they 
knew  it  not,  and  even  when  the  empire  was  scarcely 
more  than  a  vision  dimly  discerned  through  the 
warring  fragments  of  Alexander's  state.  This  they 
personified  in  the  heroic  form  of  Alexander,  son  of 
Ammon,  —  the  new  Zeus;  his  successors  became 
the  emperors  of  Rome.  Through  them  the  ideal 
of  a  Holy  Empire  was  transmitted  to  the  after- 
world.  Through  all  this  shifting  of  the  scenes 
Bacchism  in  outward  form  of  organization  could 
not  hold  itself  erect,  but  its  spirit  came  ever  more 
and  more  to  be  the  thought  of  the  world.  The  im- 
pulse it  had  awakened  found  to  no  slight  extent  its 


66  Notes 

satisfaction  in  Christianity ;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
Paganism  in  its  last  struggle  against  the  propa- 
ganda of  the  Cross,  when  it  chose  its  fittest  armor, 
chose  that  most  like  the  weapons  of  its  foe, — 
Neo-Platonism,  the  last  expression  of  the  Dionysos 
faith. 

Note  24,  page  44. 

The  essential  tone  of  Plato's  writing  is  admir- 
ably set  forth  in  the  following  statement,  —  a  state- 
ment, it  should,  however,  be  said  in  justice  to  the 
author,  not  intended  to  support  any  such  theory  of 
Plato's  connection  with  Orphism  and  Dionysos  wor- 
ship as  that  presented  in  the  text:  "He  transmits 
the  final  outcome  of  Greek  culture  to  us  in  no  quin- 
tessential distillation  of  abstract  formulas,  but  in 
vivid  dramatic  pictures  that  make  us  actual  partici- 
pants in  the  spiritual  intoxication,  the  Bacchic  re- 
velry of  philosophy,  as  Alcibiades  calls  it,  that 
accompanied  the  most  intense,  disinterested,  and 
fruitful  outburst  of  intellectual  activity  in  the  an- 
nals of  mankind."  Paul  Shorey,  Plato^  in  Libr.  of 
World's  Best  Literature. 

Note  25,  page  45. 
Republic^  pp.  609,  6ro,  presents  a  form  of  argument 
which  has  often  been  said  (cf.  Grote:  Plato,  II.  p. 
190)  to  be  entirely  distinct  from  the  other  Platonic 
arguments. 


Notes  67 

Note  26,  page  46. 
Pindar:  Olymp.  II.  95  ff.  (transl.  Myers). 

Note  27,  page  48. 
V'mdidLX  \  Fragm.  Thren.,  I.  (transl.  Myers). 

Note  28,  page  49. 
Pindar:  Fragm.  Thren.,  II.  (transl.  Myers). 

Note  29,  page  50. 
Y\i\A2x\  Fragm.  Thren.,  III.  (transl.  Myers). 

Note  30,  page  50. 
Sophocles:  Antigone^  454. 

Note  31,  page  50. 
Sophocles :  Antigone,  456  £f. 

Note  32,  page  50. 
Sophocles :  Antigone,  72  £f. 

Note  33,  page  51. 
Sophocles  :  Antigone,  559  £f. 


ELECTROTYPED  AND  PRINTED 
BY   H.   O.    HOUGHTON   AND   CO. 


CAMBRIDGE,  MASS.,  U.  S.  A. 


Date  Due 

^ .-  .  M 

U-— ^ 

_^,_— 

---► 

^ 

